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Friday, August 30, 2013

Geofencing can take many forms, and has been used extensively
by vehicle tracking systems and mobile resource managers
as early as 2001 to send out alerts when vehicles enter or leave
a particular geofenced location.

As reported by the SmartData Collective: After the web 2.0 revolution, the Internet is now poised to make its next big transition. Concepts like the Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M technology will connect the physical world with the online world, and as we find ourselves in this transitional phase, it is becoming more and more apparent that geofencing will also be a component of this next revolution.

Wikipedia defines a geo-fence as a “virtual perimeter for a real world geographic area”. But it’s core objective goes beyond defining a physical boundary; it provides businesses and marketers with the to deliver location-specific content and personalized information to a mobile user and a precise moment in time.

The meteoric success of Foursquare has inspired industry juggernauts like Facebook, Google and Twitter to deliver elaborate location-based services for their users. They intend to inject some social relevance and context into the geotagged information recorded within their massive platforms.

The impact of geofencing campaigns has already seen immensely positive marketing and lead gen results for many businesses, which have witnessed nearly a doubling of ad click-through-rates from timely and location driven offers. The prospect of serving the right user with the right information at the right time is the next big initiative for all businesses with an online presence and cannot be ignored.

So let us take an in-depth look into the 4 essential points every marketing manager and researcher should consider before jumping on the geofencing bandwagon:

Developing Engaging Content
Although geofencing can fetch you web traffic numbers you always dreamed of, the onus of retaining attention is still on you. Hence, the creativity and value in your content should be of the highest priority in order to ensure that the targeted users become active participants in your campaign.

Prioritizing Data Integration
The best way to capitalize on geofencing campaigns is to understand how to leverage the data aggregated from your users and identify further diverse demographics.

By charting down user feedback, historical consumption and user engagements across various stages of your marketing campaign, you can accordingly restructure your business model to appease all segments of your user base.

Address the Privacy Concerns of Users
Users have a legitimate concern when it comes to privacy issues, and since geofencing campaigns are reliant to a major extent on user permissions, it is critical for companies to tread carefully.

Drawing an Accurate Geofencing Perimeter
Before you start laying down strategies for your geofencing marketing campaigns, it is essential to identify the ideal coverage area for targeting. The dimensions of your geofencing perimeter are imperative in determining the number of customers you can draw to a particular location.

If marketers are able to follow these steps, then they’ll be able to fully take advantage of users who are in a particular location at a particular time. Ultimately, users can sign up for smartphone alerts from their favorite brands and receive instant alerts on events and offers they can check out at the nearest outlets at their convenience. This is the power of location data, geofencing and how we as businesses will draw context from the immensely growing number of data points available.

Electrified concrete roadways could be used for deicing or to
sense when infrastructure is cracking or in need of repairs.

As reported by Txchnologist: Decking out infrastructure with wires and sensors is the goal of many future-leaning urban planners and architects who are working to realize the dream of a true smart city. Now, the interconnected hyper-reality of interactive skins on buildings and bridges that signal when they need fixing is moving one step closer to fruition.

Several research groups have developed and patented unique formulas for electrically conductive concrete, which could deice roadways, sense when infrastructure needs repairs or even create cyber-secure buildings.

Just add water
Concrete typically has three main ingredients: cement, water and an aggregate, which is usually stone. But start playing around with that recipe, and the final product will have interesting properties. Add in a conductive aggregate - like materials science wunderkind graphene - and you’ve got electrically conductive concrete. The formula can be tweaked depending on the material’s intended use.

Here are a few applications for conductive concrete that researchers are investigating:

Hold the ice
One Canadian research group envisions the new concrete being employed in roads, sidewalks and bridges to melt dangerous ice, and to heat the floors of homes.

The invention is being developed around the world - and has been for several years. But it’s been the subject of intensive investigation at the Building Envelope and Structure research group at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), a country with particularly harsh winters. The NRC has already patented and proven the technology in small-scale applications.

According to NRC’s Rick Zaporzan, their material’s applications go beyond deicing and heating. “With a few tweaks, it can be used for developing a crack-detection system if it’s hooked up to proper sensors that can monitor and interpret that data,” he says.

That’s a useful application, considering that in the United States alone, one in nine bridges is structurally deficient, according to Transportation for America.

Cyber-secure buildings
Electrified concrete can block electromagnetic signals, which means that if it is used to insulate a building, no information could get in or out.

But what about catching an Internet signal? “A building could be electronically secured and still have Wi-Fi,” says Zaporzan. “This is already done in, for example, military shelters. But the concrete is quicker, more effective and less costly than other ways of shielding a building.”

Blocking unwanted electromagnetic signals is useful beyond creating cyber-secure buildings, explains Zaporzan. It can also shield individual objects within buildings. “The concrete can also be used to protect extremely sensitive medical equipment, and that’s a huge application,” he says.

Laying the foundation
How long until electric concrete is available on the market? “It could be commercialized within one to two years, but we need industry partners,” Zaporzan says. “These partners could be anybody who wants to take their product further, from building or bridge owners, medical equipment manufacturers, or architects and urban designers.”

There are a few limitations to the technology, such as its power source. Hardwiring the concrete to the power grid is, to date, the best option. That means that heating up an entire highway isn't practical, but heating up particularly vulnerable stretches or parts of a bridge is.

But as Zaporzan says, “Anything is possible if you can create enough power. There are so many energy options available, from wind power to hydrogen fuel cells, solar and regenerative power. Down the road, heating up an entire highway is in the realm of the possible.”

The NJ appeals court ruled that a remote 'texter' can be held liable
to third parties for injuries if they knowingly sent texts to someone
driving a vehicle - with the expectation that they would read them
while driving.

As reported by ABA Journal: In a case of first impression, a New Jersey appeals court has held that a remote texter can be held liable to third parties for injuries caused when the distracted driver has an accident.

However, that is only true if the individual sending the texts from another location knew they were being viewed by the recipient as he or she was driving. And, in the case at bar, the trial court correctly held that insufficient knowledge was shown to defeat a motion for summary judgment by the defendant texter, 17-year-old Shannon Colonna, the Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court ruled. An accident that caused serious injury to two motorcyclists occurred within less than 30 seconds of when phone records show the driver, 18-year-old Kyle Best, last received a text from her.

"We conclude that a person sending text messages has a duty not to text someone who is driving if the texter knows, or has special reason to know, the recipient will view the text while driving," explains the court in a Tuesday opinion. (PDF). "But we also conclude that plaintiffs have not presented sufficient evidence to prove that Colonna had such knowledge when she texted Best immediately before the accident."

There was no evidence that Colonna "actively encouraged" Best to text her while he was driving, the court said, and "Colonna did not have a special relationship with Best by which she could control his conduct," the appellate panel said.

Colonna had sent two texts to Best on the September 2009 afternoon when the accident occurred, and the other one was sent about two hours before the accident. The content of the messages isn't known, the court noted.

"Even if a reasonable inference can be drawn that she sent messages requiring responses, the act of sending such messages, by itself, is not active encouragement that the recipient read the text and respond immediately, that is, while driving and in violation of the law."

The claims of the plaintiffs, David and Linda Kubert, against the driver were previously settled.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

'Kill switches' include a feature that would allow users
to permanently disable their phone if lost or stolen in order
to protect access to their data, as well as phone usage.

As reported by Android Community: This isn't the first time we've heard the term “kill switch” when talking about smartphones. Samsung has talked about it in the past, and now some new reports from the Wall Street Journal is stirring things up again. This new anti-theft system looks to finally curb a massive and growing problem, and it’s already in some devices already.

Stolen phones are a huge problem, and has only increased severely with iPhone and Android phones in nearly every persons hand. The “kill switch” would reportedly make the device completely unusable, which would make stealing ones device rather useless. I like this idea already.

It's estimated that 113 cell phones are lost or stolen every minute in the U.S. alone.

Smartphone theft has reportedly jumped nearly 500% from 2009, and isn't showing any signs of slowing down, so something surely needs to be done. Swapping the SIM card, wiping the phone, or even flashing new firmware wouldn't get around this “kill switch” and the point of stealing a device would be gone. It’s a big move, and something we've seen and heard before.

The folks from Apple have Find my iPhone, and Google’s recently launched a similar service for Android, although it only finds it. Not to mention Pantech started offering this kill switch on all their devices earlier this year. For now we don’t have exact details, but the WSJ reports that both Samsung and LG could introduce this with all their phones moving forward starting in early 2014.

Keeping the 'kill' process speedy but secure will be the biggest issue, so that hackers or other entities are not able to kill your phone without your permission - while limiting access to the phone till you are sure you want to permanently disable the device.

With cloud-computing, data collected in the field can be automatically imported into other software applications using API's and web services.

As reported by Equipment World: Technology continues to evolve and the latest innovations are changing the way construction and equipment managers work. Job sites are more connected than ever, and advances in telematics provide real-time data on equipment usage and location.

While telematics technology is not new to the industry, its adoption (or, current lack thereof) is one that some are calling vital to successful construction companies.

But how successful a company, and more specifically an equipment manager, is with using telematics is a matter of doing something with all the data.

Information Overload
Possibly the biggest benefit of telematics is that you do get a lot of data. However, this data is not necessarily translated into information that can easily help you make decisions.

While real-time statistics on equipment usage and location monitoring is vital to an equipment manager’s job, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. Without a software system for equipment management that provides filtering, organization, and analysis, data is just data and fails to provide the information needed to make important fleet decisions.

Incomplete data
Consistent data tells a complete story, such as which pieces of equipment were used where, and for how long. But when there are inconsistencies or missing data, you get holes in your fleet’s story. It is the rare contractor that has the same brand of vehicles with the exact same telematics device.

With varying devices and reporting capabilities, equipment managers only have some of the data some of the time, not all of the data, all of the time for every piece of equipment.

Utilizing limited data is sustainable for the management of individual pieces on a short-term basis, but not the long term management of entire fleets of equipment. Standardized data across all pieces of equipment can be turned into useful information that lets you know your fleet’s average utility, size, and make up, and that helps you make decisions such as whether to adjust your fleet’s average age or if you should be buying or leasing equipment.

With potential holes in the data, equipment managers can’t make good decisions, begging the need for a complement to telematics.

The rest of the story
Even when data is distilled into useful information, equipment managers may not have a full understanding of their fleet’s performance. Telematics gives you data points that tell you the operating statistics of a piece of equipment. Where was it? How long did it run? How much fuel did it consume?

But this doesn't tell you why your equipment is operating in its current state. Maybe a component is broken because regular maintenance hasn't been performed or more fuel is being consumed than previous reports.

Outside influences, such as weather conditions, job site terrain and preventive maintenance activities aren't recorded with telematics. Equipment managers end up investigating on their own the answers to these why questions.

By having additional systems in the field for contextual data entry, there isn't a need to play detective—you get the why not just the what.

Complementary Equipment Software
Even though telematics provide significant amounts of data, having a way to turn that data into information is necessary for obtaining all of the benefits of telematics. This is where complementary equipment software becomes vital to making equipment decisions.

Whether you have separate equipment management software or it is tied into a larger ERP system, the latest in construction software technology allows for the easy import and export of all of your data.

With cloud-computing, data collected in the field can be automatically imported into another software application using web services. And true cloud-based software is usable on any device, which means that your field employees can enter supporting information to tell the complete story of your fleet’s usage.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket lifts off from
Vandenberge Air Force Base in California on Wednesday,
carrying the NROL-65 spy satellie into space.

As reported by NBC News: The United States' largest rocket launched a spy satellite on a hush-hush
mission Wednesday.

An unmanned Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifted
off the pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 2:03 p.m. ET (11:03
p.m. PT) Wednesday, carrying a classified payload into a polar orbit for the
U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

"Today's launch is dedicated to the men and women who serve for our nation's
freedom," a commentator said a few minutes into the liftoff.

It's unclear what intelligence the spacecraft, which is known as NROL-65, (now known as USA-245) will collect as it zips around our planet. Because of the clandestine nature of
the mission, it entered a planned media blackout about seven minutes after
liftoff.

While details of the mission are classified, numerous independent analysts identified it as a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite. KH-11 satellites are typically used to provide high-resolution optical and infrared imagery for US intelligence agencies.

'Truly honored'
"We are truly honored to deliver this
critical asset to orbit," said Jim Sponnick, United Launch Alliance vice
president for the Atlas and Delta programs. "The ULA Delta 4 Heavy is currently
the world's largest rocket, providing the nation with reliable, proven
heavy-lift capability for our country’s national security payloads from both the
east and west coasts."

The Delta 4 Heavy, built by ULA and first flown in 2004, is the biggest and
most powerful American rocket in operation today. The 235-foot-tall (72-meter)
launcher generates about 2 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, according to ULA
officials. This is still less than 1/2 of the payload mass that was capable of being launched by the Space Shuttle (2,040,000 kg).

Wednesday's launch managed to stay on schedule despite the difficulties
imposed by the automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration, which went
into effect March 1. The liftoff marked the 364th flight of a Delta rocket
overall, and the 24th for the Delta 4 family. Delta 4 rockets have now lifted
eight payloads into space for the NRO, which builds and operates the nation's spy satellites.

Bigger rockets on the way
While the Delta 4 Heavy is the
current American heavyweight rocket champ, several other vehicles on the horizon
will be even more powerful. For example, NASA is building a giant rocket called
the Space Launch System to send
astronauts toward asteroids, Mars and other destinations in deep space.

The first incarnation of SLS will stand 321 feet (98 meters) tall and carry
up to 70 metric tons of payload. But NASA plans to develop a 384-foot-tall
(117-meter-tall) "evolved" version that would be capable of blasting 130 metric
tons into space, making it the most powerful rocket ever built.

The SLS is designed to launch a crew capsule called Orion, which is also in
development. The rocket and capsule are slated to fly together for the first
time during an unmanned test run in 2017, with the first crewed mission expected
to come in 2021.

Orion will be ready to fly before the SLS is up and running. Orion's first
test flight is scheduled to take place in 2014, when NASA will use a Delta 4
Heavy to send an uncrewed Orion out to a distance of 3,700 miles (6,000
kilometers) from Earth — farther than any spacecraft built for humans has
traveled since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is also working on a big rocket, which
it calls the Falcon Heavy. That launcher,
which is expected to fly for the first time in 2014, will produce nearly 4
million pounds of thrust at liftoff, SpaceX officials say.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

As reported by NPR: Whenever your cell phone is on, 'They' know where you are — and I mean all the Theys, the spooks, the merchants, the drone pilots, the private detectives, probably even the Chinese. If you want your privacy, says artist/designer Adam Harvey, you can go to the back of your phone, pry out the battery and break the connection, but that takes time (and long fingernails). Why should it be so hard to disappear when you want to? It shouldn't, he says. So he's been designing privacy accessories — spaces to hide in.

With his pal, the fabricator Johanna Bloomfield, this summer Adam went on Kickstarter to raise money for the newest design, the "OFF Pocket." It's a privacy product, a little cloak of invisibility in this case, a purse made of "specialized metal fabric" that he says will block all incoming phone signals (CDMA/GSM), Wi-Fi, GPS and Internet connections. Just slip your phone in this little bag, adjust the straps, and advertisers, your government, or, if you're a Pakistani, that drone in the sky can't track you to your hip pocket. This was their video pitch

This appeal worked, more than worked. Adam and Johanna were looking for $35,000, and Tuesday, when the money-raising period ended, they had $56,447 from 668 people — which I don't think they could have done a year ago.

A year ago, we hadn't seen Edward Snowden's NSA leaks that showed how our government collects this stuff wholesale from all of us, no warrants necessary. We didn't know the FBI may be asking phone companies to track our calls, or that camera-bearing drones are becoming more and more popular, not just with law enforcement agencies, but with private businesses and teenagers who use them to peer through each other's windows, or that people now walk around with "Google Glass" glasses that shoot photos and videos of friends without much evidence that there's a camera on. At some point, all these devices, multiplying and multiplying, make us wonder, even if we'd never wondered this before, "Who's watching me? "

And once we start wondering, it's only natural to think about protecting ourselves — and that's the change, I suspect, that has just begun. How else to explain Adam and Johanna's success this month on Kickstarter?

Beats The Refrigerator
After all, I don't think any independent appraiser has measured the effectiveness of the OFF Pocket. In their video, Adam says their signal-proof purse works better than hiding your phone in a refrigerator (which is where Edward Snowden asked visitors to put their phones when they visited), or than dropping your phone into a cocktail shaker (something James Bond might have done).

That's nice, but a sensible customer might want to know more, like has Consumer Reports taken one of these things to a test lab and zapped it? Or shouldn't we worry that if we put a live phone in an out-of-the-way place, it will frantically try to find a tower to connect to, exhausting its battery? What if using an OFF Pocket drastically shortens the utility of your phone?

What's in the "specialized metal fabric" that's worth $85 a pop? If you wrapped your phone in tinfoil (3 cents a pop) would this work just as well?

Normally, I'd be a suspicious buyer, but the times are not normal. Adam and Johanna's first edition of the OFF Pocket sold out. The second edition, I'm guessing, will go fast. People now want these things.

Ford's connected cars will one day resemble extra-planetary
robots in having multiple redundant network connections,
ensuring they never lose contact with the vehicles and highway
infrastructure around them.

As reported by GigaOM: In its efforts to build a better connected
car, Ford is doing research in a rather odd place: the International Space
Station. Ford is entering into a three-year project with St. Petersburg
Polytechnic University to study how space-based research and exploration robots
communicate through telematics networks.

What do robots have to do with cars? Well, the next-generation of space-based
robots will be some of the most hyper-connected machines in the universe,
relying on multiple radio technologies to communicate with the space station,
the astronauts they’re meant to assist, and human controllers back on Earth.
Though robots will be able to function with some autonomy, they’ll constantly be
coordinating with computers and maybe even other robots.

Ford believes that the future connected car will function much the same way,
acting semi-autonomously while coordinating its activities with cloud traffic
management systems as well as the highway infrastructure and vehicles around
them. Just as robots use multiple radio technologies to maintain those different
“tethers” to mission control, future cars will come outfitted with multiple
network links, from LTE to dedicated
short-range communications (DSRC) to Wi-Fi
mesh.

What Ford is particularly interested in are the redundancies that St.
Petersburg Polytechnic is developing for its robot telematics networks. As you
can imagine, having your control link to a robot cut isn’t something any
astronaut wants to deal with — in the hazardous environment of space or in the
limited confines of a space station, retrieving your suddenly unresponsive robot
is a lot harder than it sounds.

But that broken control link could then be routed over different networks,
say a wireless local area networks used for internet access or a direct radio
link to another robot. The guy with the joystick in his hand may have to take a
more circuitous route to communicate with his metallic friend, but he’ll still
be able to communicate.

That same principle applies to the connected car. As cars become more
intelligent and autonomous, they’ll depend
on an array of sensors and network connections to feed them information.
Cars will form vast
constantly shifting ad hoc networks, transmitting information to one another
about their acceleration, braking, lane changes and even eventual destinations,
which in turn will allow them to coordinate their driving. Vehicles will also
communicate with highway infrastructure around them and connect to the internet
through cellular connections. According to Ford technical leader in systems
analytics Oleg Gusikhin:

“We are analyzing the data to research which networks are the most robust and
reliable for certain types of messages, as well as fallback options if networks
were to fail in a particular scenario. In a crash, for example, a vehicle could
have the option to communicate an emergency though a DSRC, LTE or a mesh network
based on the type of signal, speed and robustness required to reach emergency
responders as quickly as possible.”

Though Ford’s initial focus is on using telematics redundancy to route
emergency communications, it’s easy to see how these multinode networks could be
used in other scenarios.

If the vehicle-to-vehicle radios in your car were to suddenly go down,
chances are you’d want to take direct control of the wheel, but that doesn’t
mean your car has to go off grid. Other radios could communicate with the
vehicle-to-infrastructure network or even the cloud through a cellular
connection, which could then pass on your car’s sensor data to other vehicles
around you. Those other vehicles could in turn use the same channels to pass key
information back to your car, for instance warning you of accidents or traffic
jams ahead.

Many of these ad hoc-networking concepts relate to the shared
bandwidth principles we plan to discuss October 16-17 at
Mobilize 2013 in San Francisco. If vehicles were able to securely share
their connections, we could always communicate with the internet and critical
transportation systems by the most efficient – and often cheapest — means
possible. So say instead of streaming high-quality audio over an expensive LTE
connection, cars could use their vehicular mesh to pass the stream along from a
highway access point car to car until it reached your dashboard.

Ford’s project with St. Petersburg Polytechnic will focus on multiple robots,
including the NASA-designed
Robonaut 2, which is already aboard the ISS; the European Space Agency’s Eurobot
Ground Prototype, a robotic assistant designed to aid astronauts on a
planet’s surface, and Justin,
a humanoid robot designed by Germany’s DLR for fine-grained manipulation of
objects

As reported by Engadget: Light-up clothing is all the rage, and a company called Erogear is upping the ante with Fos, a Bluetooth-enabled solution for style-conscious athletes.The brainchild of engineer Anders Nelson, Fos is a lightweight, Velcro-lined fabric strip of lights with a customizable display. What sets it apart from Erogear's other wearable options is the fact that it's controlled by your mobile phone. The LED grid can be programmed to double as your very own turn signal (useful for nocturnal bike-riding), advertise sponsors or even brag about how many calories you've burned while running. Coming it at around 32 grams (roughly the weight of a golf ball), this illuminated patch packs an LED matrix driver, 32-bit microprocessor, flash memory and a power supply in its 2mm profile.

The Kickstarter campaign is offering a choice of three designs to backers: an 11 x 3 inch strip, an 11 x 5 inch version and a black leather belt for those times you feel like literally shining at the club. Though the demo package is currently Android-only, iOS and desktop versions are potentially on the horizon. A pledge of $125 will net you your very own Fos kit, and units are scheduled to start shipping in February of 2014, provided the campaign hits its $200,000 goal.

As reported by Insurance & Technology: Lexis-Nexis, which offers a telematics analytics platform for insurance companies, commissioned research to find out how consumers view usage-based insurance (also known as Pay How You Drive [PHYD]) and what would spur them to adopt it. Here are some key findings, which were reported and contrasted with a 2010 survey that asked similar questions.

Awareness of usage-based insurance (UBI) has tripled since 2010. A third of consumers are now aware of the concept, mostly Progressive's Snapshot program (78% of awareness, compares to 8% for Allstate, the next highest).

Most UBI telematics uses a device thatattaches to the vehicles OBD-II port. Thesedevices provide information about locationusing integrated GPS, as well as speed, brakingand acceleration.

Consumers are more uncomfortable with social networks (63%) than the UBI concept (48%). While more than half reported discomfort with online banking and search engines, only a third were uncomfortable with a "program sharing information leading up to an accident to determine fault." Though there was a 7% drop in the amount of respondents who said UBI "gives too much information," consumers were more uncomfortable with information sharing overall compared to three years ago.

Consumers value perceived control over rates highly when weighing the pros of a UBI program. They also are keen to receive discounts: 72% said they'd try it out for an automatic 10% off their premium, and 62% said they'd sign up for the potential for a 15% discount. A further 36% said they would change carriers to sign up for a UBI program with a 10% discount.

Consumers sign up looking for discounts, they want to be able to opt-out without penalty. That was the highest factor that would increase UBI interest, even beating out the discount itself. Consumers also reported high interest in choosing the information that they provide, and also largely want assurances that their information is only stored for a short time (70%).

Two-thirds of respondents with drivers age 16-25 in the household said they would sign up for UBI to get information on their younger drivers. Self-evaluation was less warmly received overall, though: while 69% indicated interest in a driving score, tips to improve that score were only valued by 56% of respondents.

Consumers want to use their smartphones, not black boxes: 73% said it would be easier to adopt a UBI program if it used a smartphone app.

Following the research, Lexis-Nexis says that insurers who want to get into UBI should:

Offer discounts

Provide control over policyholder information

Target consumers under 35

Offer trial period with automatic discounts for trials

The value of the data to the insurance industry is that it allows them to better calculate the accident risk of specific drivers based on their patterns of behavior and time spent on the road.

As reported by Bloomberg: The watchman atGermany’s largest oil refinery, the MiRO plant in Karlsruhe, would wait until a fellow security guard was out of sight before sending a text message that it was safe to drive a 10,000-liter tanker of stolen diesel out the gates.

His tip-offs earned him bribes of 300 euros ($400) for each of the 87 truckloads that were stolen over a period of more than a year starting in early 2011. The scam went undetected until one of the three tank-cleaning company employees involved was fired and informed police. Combined with evidence from a toll-booth camera, the revelation landed all four in jail in June.

The heist underscored growing fuel theft, smuggling and fraud in Europe, where governments from Poland to the U.K. are losing between 100 million euros and 1.3 billion euros in tax revenue a year. The crime is spreading in the region in part because retail prices for diesel have jumped 52 percent since 2009. Executives at eight of 10 refiners surveyed by Bloomberg say their profits are suffering too.

“This criminal activity is undermining the fabric of the legitimate petroleum industry and the state, at a time when economic challenges have never been so great,” said Tom Noonan, chairman of the Irish Petroleum Industry Association and chief executive officer of Maxol Group, a Dublin-based oil retailer. “Illegal activity has been allowed to grow to such a large scale unimpeded.”

Fraudulent Share

While the European Commission, Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, and Europia, the Brussels-based refiners’ trade association, don’t provide region-wide statistics on fuel fraud, data from individual governments show the extent of the crime.

Tax fraud in Poland jumped by 47 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to an audit of more than 1,000 fuel traders and retailers, Wieslawa Drozdz, a spokeswoman at the Finance Ministry in Warsaw, said by e-mail on July 24. Poland lost 3 billion zloty ($943 million) last year, according to the Polish Organization of Oil Industry and Trade.

The U.K. forfeited more than 1.1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to fuel fraud in the 2008-2009 tax year, according to a parliamentary committee report last year.

In Greece, the illegal fuel market has ballooned to 600 million euros a year, the nation’s Finance Ministry said, without providing figures for previous years.

Compounds Shutdowns

Europe’s black market is adding to hard times for refiners as the lowest demand in two decades saps returns, according to the International Energy Agency. An average 11.6 million barrels a day of crude was processed from January through May in the region’s richest economies, the lowest level for any corresponding period since 1989, the Paris-based IEA said in a report on July 11.

Refinery margins, the profit from turning crude into fuels such as diesel and gasoline, were about $4 a barrel in Northwest Europe last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with $8 a year ago and a peak $20 a barrel in September 2008, the data show.

Margins will probably stay below 2012 levels for the rest of this year, OMV AG (OMV), the Vienna-based oil company that runs refineries in Austria, Germany and Romania, said in an earnings statement Aug. 13.

Fuel fraud in countries such as Austria and Germany is dwarfed by scams taking place in Eastern Europe, according to PKN Orlen SA, Poland’s largest refiner. Untaxed supplies account for more than 13 percent of Poland’s diesel market, according to industry estimates. As much as 20 percent of fuel consumed in the Czech Republic is illegal, according to government data.

Border Traffic

Smuggling is most prevalent in border areas where price gaps are the widest. Diesel, Europe’s most-used motor fuel, averaged 31.27 rubles (71 euro-cents) per liter last week in Russia, compared with 1.30 euros in Poland and 1.34 euros in Lithuania, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

In Lithuania, where one in every four consumers admits to having bought on the black market, fraudsters purchase lower-priced fuel from drivers of cars and trucks coming from Russia and Belarus and then sell it below local rates at a profit, according to the Vilnius-based Lithuanian Free Market Institute. The fuel is usually sold in parking lots, the institute said in a report.

“Tax evasion in the fuel market has taken the form of organized crime,” Marek Switajewski, the CEO at Unipetrol AS, the largest Czech refiner, said in a June interview in Prague. Fuel fraud costs the company more than 19 million euros a year, he said.

Mobile Pump

Fraud is also infecting western European markets. Police in Northern Ireland stopped a van on Aug. 13 that was equipped with a pump, storage tanks and hoses, according to HMRC, Britain’s tax agency.

As part of the investigation, a makeshift plant capable of producing about 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of fuel a week was found in a shed. Three men were arrested after 2,000 liters of illegal fuel were discovered.

Mobile pumps “are very cheap to establish; we dismantle them, they pop up again,” John Whiting, assistant director for criminal investigation at HMRC, told the parliamentary committee in London last year. “We are aware that there are queues of cars trying to get into these places.”

Fraudsters in Northern Ireland can sell illegal diesel for as much as 40 pence (62 U.S. cents) per liter less than legitimate fuel and still make a profit, according to the committee’s report. Last week, diesel was selling in the U.K. for about 1.42 pounds a liter, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Luxembourg Lowest

Differences in national tax systems are stoking the fraud. The share of tax in the pump price for diesel is 41 percent in Luxembourg, the lowest in the region, data compiled by Bloomberg show. In the U.K., tax accounts for as much as 58 percent of the price.

“There are price incentives to move fuel from one part of Europe to another,” Alan Gelder, head of the downstream oils-research service at Wood Mackenzie Ltd., a consultant to international and national oil companies, said in a phone interview from London. People from neighbouring countries often go to Luxembourg to fill their tanks, as it has the lowest fuel tax in that area, said Gelder.

Freezing weather often reveals the extent of Europe’s black market. Plunging temperatures render lower-quality fuel illegally imported from countries such as Belarus and Russia all but unusable, forcing motorists to turn to legitimate sources, according to Beata Karpinska, a spokeswoman for PKN Orlen in Plock, Poland.

Sales of diesel and gasoline at Lithuanian pumps jumped about 20 percent one week in February 2012, when temperatures dropped to an average of minus 17.8 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit), according to the Lithuanian Free Market Institute.

Government Response

European governments are trying to respond. Czech President Milos Zeman signed a law July 18 changing the country’s tax code for fuel trade. Poland’s lower house of parliament adopted similar measures on July 26. Ireland introduced an electronic system this year to monitor fuel movements, said Noonan of the Irish oil association.

“We want to start being competitive with refineries in the region,” said Switajewski at Unipetrol, which expects the illegal trade to drop 50 percent by 2017 as a result of the new laws.

Motorists can take legal advantage of cheaper fuel in neighboring countries by crossing national borders to fill up. About 3,500 Poles drive more than 10 times each month into Kaliningrad, a Russian territory wedged between Lithuania and Poland, to buy at lower costs.

Tightened Security

At the Mineraloelraffinerie Oberrhein GmbH, or MiRO, refinery in Karlsruhe, officials are tightening security after the 2011 heist, the company said in an Aug. 1 statement on its website.

The three tank cleaners began stealing diesel using 4,000-liter trucks, according to details of the case confirmed to Bloomberg by Jochen Herkle, a spokesman for the local district court. After recruiting the security guard, the thieves upgraded to 10,000-liter tankers, Herkle said. All four men confessed when caught, and the one who tipped off police received a shorter prison term than his associates, according to Herkle.

The company lost 912,000 liters of diesel and heating fuel in the theft between early 2011 and June 2012, Herkle said. That amount would now have a retail value of as much as 1.3 million euros in Germany.

Without measures to contain fuel fraud, there may be “a snowball effect, which will take years to be stopped,” the Polish Organization of Oil Industry and Trade said in an April report.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

As reported by Financial Director: When capital expenditure demands increased productivity from corporations by implementing new technology or processes such as improving existing machinery or updating back office functionality; investing in a vehicle tracking system probably doesn't sit at the top of most finance directors’ lists of priorities.

But telematics systems have evolved into much more than simple vehicle recovery tools – it is now a service that provides detailed information on fuel consumption, driver performance, travel times and routes, all delivered in real time.

With fuel prices continuing to dominate the news – fuel has risen by, on average, more than 50% over the past five years – helping drivers to reduce fuel consumption should be at the top of the fleet agenda of any business. Indeed, a survey of about 1,000 business drivers across the UK by ALD Automotive found that 70% of fleet drivers believed they could cut their fuel consumption if they were financially incentivised to do so.

Based on a typical fleet of 50 vehicles averaging 25,000 miles a year on average fuel consumption of 40mpg, the survey suggests cost savings of £10,000 ($15.5K USD) could easily be achieved by incentivising drivers to reduce their fuel spending by 5%.

“By using data collected from systems, businesses can set up monthly performance tables for their drivers, promoting more efficient driving and making it easier to implement any fuel saving incentive schemes,” says Mel Dawson, managing director at ALD.

It is eye-opening to see how detailed this information can be. According to Steve Evans, chief executive at In-Car Cleverness, part of the Accident Exchange Group, telematics systems now use algorithms that can tell you what makes a driver good or bad.

“You can see their speed relative to time of day, relative to location,” Evans says. Not only does this allow the business to pinpoint inefficient drivers that need training, it also provides data on the performance of the car versus the routes it has taken, stopping unnecessary journeys.

“You might find the car is wholly inappropriate for the type of journey the driver is choosing,” Evans adds.

Cut fuel costs
For instance, one security company using a remote management telematics system was able to cut its fuel spending by 37% by being able to monitor vehicle movement, identify unnecessary journeys and erratic driving behavior, and incentivise drivers with monthly and annual awards.

Morelli Group, the largest automotive refinish distributor in the UK, uses the same system across all of its commercial vehicles. “The system has helped us to reduce fuel consumption and, with fuel prices still high, any measure we can introduce to drive more economically is good for our business,” says Rob Cohen, finance director at Morelli.

In addition, telematics can help highlight to drivers the need to monitor their driving style, resulting in better driver safety and consequently having a positive impact on their accident levels.

Company vehicle incidents take a lot of shine off the bottom line. Average bodywork repair bills, according to benchmark data from the body shop industry, are now nearly £1,300 ($2,000 USD) per car.

Writing for Financial Director last year, Albert Vissers, chief financial officer of fleet management and funding company Alphabet, said hidden incident costs typically come in at twice the cost of physical repairs.

“They include disruption to business and potential lost sales while vehicles are off the road. Then there are uninsured losses such as drivers’ out-of-pocket expenses, vehicle hire and insurance excesses,” he wrote.

According to Evans at In-Car Cleverness, this can help reduce insurance premiums by “demonstrating you have a measurable strategy to reduce claims”.

Though the key interest for finance directors is cost reduction, telematics can actually improve customer service levels. “If a driver is on route, we can input the customer's address and give the customer an estimated time of arrival,” says Evans.

The experience at Morelli has been the same, with Cohen claiming the business has been able to reassure its customers that their needs were being met in the fastest and most efficient way.

“[The system] helped save us time and provide a better level of customer service through accurately locating technicians and assigning jobs that are closest to them, as well as advising drivers of the most direct route to a particular job,” Cohen says.

As reported by FleetOwner: A broad
survey of transportation executives in the aerospace, aviation, trucking,
maritime and railroad industries finds that concerns over energy availability,
cost, and regulatory burdens are rapidly increasing, with their fears fueling
changes in corporate strategy – especially in terms of supply chain
management.

Most of the 209 responses to this study –
conducted this summer by Forbes
Insights on behalf of the CIT Group – came
from freight and passenger carriers, along with manufacturers, freight brokers
and dealers operating in the transportation space, and found that more than
eight out of 10 (81%) believe uncertainty surrounding energy policies is
hampering global economic recovery.

On top of that, 80% of those polled added that today’s higher fuel costs are
reducing global economic growth, with more than six out of 10 (63%) believing
that fuel prices will increase over the next 18 months. A further 78% expect
prices to increase over the next three years and 69% think prices will increase
over the next five years, CIT found, with 38% believing those price hikes will
be “significant.”

“This study highlights the fact that transportation
executives are preparing for a future of uncertainty, both in terms of fuel
prices and regulations,” noted Jeff Knittel, president of CIT Transportation Finance. “In doing so, they are
implementing strategic business plans in response to the potential for a
protracted era of higher energy costs and growing concern regarding current and
proposed emissions regulations.”

Those “strategic plans” also cover a wide assortment of areas, CIT added. For
example, nearly half(47%) of carriers reported their customers are working more
closely with third-party logistics groups to optimize transportation costs, with
35% noting that their customers are relocating production or warehousing for the
same reason.

Another 81% told CIT that they are updating their fleets to be more energy
efficient, with 79% adding that they are doing more to promote their sector’s
energy efficiency relative to other transportation modes.

On top of that, more than three out of four (77%) manufacturers are working
to develop vessels, trucks and rolling stock that are more energy efficient,
with another 64% noting that they are investing in new plants expressly for this
purpose. Finally, 84% said they are working more closely with transportation
companies to “engineer” greater transportation efficiency, according to CIT’s
findings.

Still, despite all of those efforts, 31% believe their customers will still
encounter “financial duress” as a result of rising energy costs,

That “duress” is partly due to the greater impact of regulations on energy,
especially when it comes to rules designed to control and reduce emissions,
those polled by CIT reported.

For starters, 76% of transportation executives said they are “concerned” by
current and proposed emissions regulations, with 47% of them adding that the
state of emissions regulation is contributing to higher energy costs – a figure
that rises to 64% among trucking companies. Overall, 86% say such emissions
regulations are adding to operating costs, with 79% adding that regulatory
actions are forcing their companies to increase spending on capital
equipment.

TL carrier Werner
Enterprises touched on the monetary impact upon trucking operators trying
to comply with such emission rules within its second quarter earnings report
issued back in July.

“It is very difficult for many smaller and medium size private carriers to
replace their older, lower-value trucks with much higher cost, EPA
[Environmental Protection Agency]-compliant new trucks, which significantly
reduces the risk of trucks being added to the market,” Werner explained.

“We reduced the average age of our much younger truck fleet by half a year
during 2011 and 2012, with net capital expenditures totaling $457 million during
that two-year period,” the carrier pointed out. “The significantly higher cost
of new trucks and resulting higher depreciation expense and related diesel
exhaust fluid costs is not being recovered through a single year customer rate
review cycle.”

As reported by Slam Online: Data-tracking cameras are so last week. GPS is now where it’s at in the League. The Dallas Mavericks are one of eight teams that are beginning to experiment with wearable GPS tracking devices on players, as a tool to help them better understand and train their athletes. Per the Dallas Morning News: “The devices track player movements and body vitals and are designed to optimize training efficiency and mitigate injury risks. ‘We just want to be able to get smarter about our players and how to train them and how to put them in a position to succeed,’ said Mavs owner Mark Cuban. ‘So that’s just one component of a lot of different things that we’re doing.’ Athletes wear a cell-phone sized device on the inside of their jerseys between their shoulders, and it records their every movement in all directions as well as their heart rate. This gives coaches what Catapult’s Gary McCoy describes as a ‘dashboard’ for players’ bodies. While the devices have only been used in practices, Cuban said that he is considering using them during the preseason and that the league has not yet prevented him from doing so. (The Spurs have used the devices in Summer League games, becoming the first team to use them in game situations. The NBA prohibits the use of the devices during regular season games.) For the Mavs, the technology seems to be only one part of a much larger sports science technology plan. Cuban recently fired his 10-year strength and conditioning coach and said his replacement will be ‘more of an expert in performance technology science.’The Mavs were also one of the first four NBA teams–along with the Spurs, Rockets, and Thunder–to install SportVU cameras in the rafters of its arena in 2011 to track player and ball movements throughout games.”The devices are similar to those being used by the NFL to evaluate performance and speed for players.Use of GPS and other sensors to evaluate professional and amateur athletes is a growing trend ("Athletic telematics"), and may also be utilized in the other sports or venues such as the Olympics in the future.

As reported by Science World Report: Grocery merchants in Texas, California and New York will soon have ice cream,
frozen foods and fresh produce delivered by tractor trailers whose refrigeration
units are powered by fuel cells, a clean technology that makes energy silently
and with dramatically reduced emissions.

The fuel cells will do the work normally done by a small diesel engine, which
keeps the cargo at the proper temperature while the trucks are making
deliveries. Each of the four trucks will still be equipped with a main diesel
engine that actually powers the truck.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is overseeing the project, believe this will be the first time
that refrigerated trucks making deliveries have been equipped with a fuel cell
-- a device that creates electricity by driving chemical reactions using
hydrogen and air. The only byproducts are heat and water.

"This is a great application for a fuel cell," said Kriston Brooks, the PNNL
researcher leading the project. "A trailer refrigeration unit traditionally is
powered by a small diesel engine or electric motor that drives compressors to
provide cooling to the cargo. A fuel cell can potentially provide a clean, quiet
and efficient alternative by powering the electric motor."

Two leading fuel cell manufacturers, Massachusetts-based Nuvera and Albany,
N.Y.-based Plug Power Inc., will each receive $650,000 from DOE's Office of
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The companies will provide matching
funds and labor of their own. A PNNL team led by Brooks will oversee and
evaluate the two-year program.

Industry officials estimate that approximately 300,000 refrigerated trucks
with auxiliary power units are on the road in the United States. By replacing
the small diesel engines with the more efficient fuel cell, users will see fuel
savings of approximately 10 gallons a day per unit, in addition to reduced
emission of pollutants and significantly quieter operation.

Fuel cells are becoming more common as energy sources in buildings and in
vehicles such as buses. While the devices are generally more expensive than
traditional forms of energy generation, many scientists and product developers
expect that as they become more widely adopted and production levels increase,
their cost will come down, similar to what has happened to products like cell
phones.

"One of the goals is to accelerate fuel cell use in industry," said Brooks.
"In spite of their higher costs now, the higher efficiency and zero emissions
from fuel cells are enough to convince many companies not to wait to implement
this technology. Fuel cell products are already used widely in warehouses, and
this project broadens their reach."

In one project, Nuvera will work with Thermo King to develop the
refrigeration unit to keep the truck cool using Nuvera's OrionTM fuel
cell stack. That truck will make deliveries for a Sysco Corp. food distribution
facility in Riverside, Calif., and for a San Antonio, Texas, food distribution
center for the H-E-B grocery store chain.

In the other project, Plug Power will work with Carrier Transicold and Air
Products to equip trucks making deliveries for a Sysco Corp. food distribution
facility on Long Island. The trucks will be equipped with Plug Power's GenDrive
fuel cell product.

Both the Sysco and the H-E-B facilities already use forklifts powered by
hydrogen fuel cells, part of a trend fostered by DOE to increase the use of the
technology in industry. At both companies, the infrastructure to provide
hydrogen for the fuel cells is already in place; the hydrogen is generated on
site from natural gas and water using Nuvera's PowerTapTM hydrogen
generator and refueling system. For the site using the Plug Power technology,
the hydrogen will be supplied by Air Products using an outdoor hydrogen
dispenser.

Each fuel-cell powered refrigerated trailer will run for at least 400 hours
at each demonstration site, delivering goods from the distribution centers to
stores or other outlets.

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About Me

I have more than 25 years of experience in development, design, and mobile communications products and technology. I also enjoy skiing, hiking, scuba, tennis, reading, traveling, foreign languages, and painting. I'm an active member of the National Ski Patrol (NSP) and volunteer my time at either Loveland Ski resort, or Ski Cooper.